


Invited to the Cookout

by FreddieFcknMercury



Category: Captain America, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Black Reader, Black!Reader - Freeform, F/M, Genderless!Reader, M/M, Other, Racism, Violence, alluding to assault, black boyfriend, black girlfriend, cursing, genderless reader, head canon, pre serum steve - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreddieFcknMercury/pseuds/FreddieFcknMercury
Summary: Steve gets into some trouble trying to help reader but they're ready to help him out as well.





	Invited to the Cookout

**Author's Note:**

> I got a lot of great feedback and support for my Steve headcanon and I decided I was gonna make something out of it because haters can suck it. 
> 
> Reader is Black but genderless.  
> Be nice I'm delicate.

You are running behind this morning. Just a few minutes but that's plenty to get you in trouble. You always cut through the back alley at the edge of this neighbourhood, this notoriously white neighbourhood. It helps shave a little time and if you wanted to keep your job you definitely needed to now. You're cutting it close on making it to work. For months you'd had all the work schedules sorted, yours plus the white folks around here, so you could avoid any unwanted attention and breeze through quickly. But that was only if you were on time, and today you were late.  
You clung to the wall on your left just in case you needed to duck behind some garbage cans and so far this plan seemed to work. You finally reached the half way point, a small crevice of a trash lot. You stop. Voices. A large part of you wants to turn back and take the long way; risk being the extra 10minutes late. What are they gonna do? Oh, fire you...  
You ponder over this for as long as you could. Just dart past and they wont see and if they do, just t. Keep. Walking. You pull your scarf up over your face, pull down your cap, and hold your coat as close to you as possible. Hopefully they don't notice anything off. With a deep shaky breath you speed past the open lot. Theres four of them. Four very large white men just shooting the breeze, smoking. It's almost 7am, maybe it's too early to start something. You get a good few yards away. Did that just work? It worked... You were almost ready to let yourself relax before you hear a man's voice calling from behind you.

"Hey you! What do you think you're doin?"  
Shit. Just keep walking. You're almost home free. 

"Hey shit head, you know you shouldn't be here."  
Just keep walking. You pick up the pace trying to close the distance between you and the corner, it'd be easy enough to lose them after that.

The rest of the men chime in and their words start to rush together. You find the courage to glance back. Oh... You hadn't seen him following behind you. Had he been watching you? Most everybody from your neighbourhood just calls him 'Brooklyn.' You've never met him, but he's easy enough to recognise. The scrawny white boy with the big mouth who seems to like getting his ass kicked. Steve. He had stopped right in front of the open lot where the men were and they've started to circle him. He gave some prick, one of their friends you assumed, a black eye around here about two weeks ago and managed to skate by with his life. But just barely. They just think he's being crazy right now, showing up like this alone, and he was. Incredibly crazy, but you can see what's really happening. He's being your distraction. They hadn't even noticed you yet. He's trying to let you get out of here safely. It's the dumbest fucking thing you've ever seen, but they'd do much worse things to you than they would to him, and they might end up killing him. 

You make a run for it the last few feet. Hugging the wall and catching a quick glimpse as you round the corner of a fist connecting with his face, the first of many.  
You slide to the ground panting. A big part of you is pleading with your legs to just get up and go to work. To ignore all of this, just like any other day. He knew what he was doing. It's not your problem... but the good part of you, luckily the larger part, knows you aren't just going to leave him there.

"Shit..."

You stand up taking one giant shaky breath and tie your scarf extra tight around your face. Pulling on your safety goggles you tighten your cap and gloves as much as you can, trying to mask your identity. You find a spare hunk of wood in the trash nearby and pull up a lose brick from the curb. This might be suicide but you have to do something.  
Taking off from around the corner you give your best war cry and hope that scares at least one of them away before you have to do any real fighting. You come up behind the closest man and swing the plank wide. It connects with his lower back and he goes down hard. 

"What the fuck is going on?!" The man across from you is yelling at his friends, almost panicked. This might actually work. You don't think you'll get much more lucky against three significantly larger men so you close your eyes and start to swing wildly, screaming in every direction. Hoping for the best. After a second or two there's some shuffling and you decide to finally check out your surroundings. They took off. Scared, Idiots. You toss your make-shift weapons aside happy you didn't need to use that brick after all.

"Yeah go on now! Run home to your mama!" You almost felt accomplished. There might be something pleasantly relaxing about beating up racists, and with that you realised why you were swinging planks of wood around in the first place and turn to look for Brooklyn.  
He's lying flat on the ground, panting. Eyes closed, lip busted. You move in his direction startling him a little. 

"Are you alright?" He's scrambling to try and get up, you can see he's a little disoriented.

"I'll live. What about you?" He's trying to brush this off like he didn't almost die helping you, but you can see he's in a lot of pain. You nod and give him a hand to stand up. He's small. Five foot, and not enough for all that attitude inches; quite a bit shorter than you. You scan each other's faces briefly, you have no idea what you're looking for; there's a lot there.

"...what you did. You didn't have to- you shouldn't have." He shrugs and adjusts the oversized jacket on his thin frame. 

"I don't like bullies... you shouldn't have done that either to be fair." He gives you a genuine smirk this time. "I'm Steve, by the way. Rogers." His eyes are soft. 

"Y/N... y/l/n." You shake hands but it feels informal for the occasion but a hug isn't appropriate either... 

"You should definitely get going. They'll make their way back here soon. With reinforcements." You snap out of whatever daze you were in, realising he's absolutely right and you're now absolutely late for work.

"Oh, Right. Thank you. Steve. This was... thank you." You sigh. It was a stupid thing for him to do, but you were just as stupid coming back for him. Now you both have enemies, but maybe you also have a friend?  
You give his hand one last squeeze before dropping it. You start to dust yourself off and get ready mentally for your shift. There's something lingering though and you can't shake it. You stop and turn back to yell at him. 

"Theres an old run down building on the beach near Coney Island..." He slid his hands into his pockets nervously, shifting his weight. You realise what it was you were looking for earlier. There's something... comforting? about him. You don't know what, but it's there and you trust him.

He nods, "...I know it?" You think he might trust you too.

"Next Thursday evening there's gonna be a little cookout, maybe a party type of thing after. Halloween and all that... you should say I invited you."


End file.
